AMD takes on new boss for PC, gaming, semi-custom businesses

I chatted with AMD earlier on today with some NDA news regarding some staff changes in very important areas of the company, with an industry veteran joining the company to handle the PC, gaming, and semi-custom businesses.

AMD has announced that it will be unifying all sales operations to Darren Grasby, who will be taking on the role of senior vice president and chief sales officer or AMD. He will "lead the global sales and go-to-market activities across all product lines, channels and regions. Previously, Grasby was responsible for worldwide sales to PC manufacturers and channel partners".

The more interesting hire is industry veteran Sandeep Chennakeshu who will be the new executive vice president of Computing and Graphics for AMD, where he will handle all things high-performance PC, gaming, and semi-custom businesses that include the next-gen Microsoft and Sony consoles with Next Xbox consoles teased, and the upcoming PlayStation 5 which all feature custom Zen 2 processors and custom Navi GPUs.

Chennakeshu has "extensive semiconductor experience, a deep technology understanding from a systems and software perspective, and extensive general management experience. He has spent the last 30 years serving in multiple senior engineering and executive roles at Ericsson, Freescale, Sony and BlackBerry". Not only that, but Chennakeshu "earned his Doctorate in electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Management from the Indian Institute of Science. He is an IEEE Fellow, and a named inventor on 170 patents and over 250 patent applications".

AMD is also announcing it is promoting Mark Papermaster to executive vice president and CTO in "recognition of his leadership in driving the technology vision and roadmap execution of the company". This is a well-deserved upgrade for Papermaster, who has steered the company in so many ways since he joined in 2011. He was a large part of the re-engineered engineering processes for AMD that resulted in the Zen CPU architecture, Infinity Fabric technology with its modular design, and so much more.